


the weight of everything we couldn't say

by nadin



Category: Snowpiercer (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post 2x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadin/pseuds/nadin
Summary: Bennett and Melanie have a couple of moments together after she returns to Snowpiercer. Post 2x01, not overly canonic - yet.
Relationships: Melanie Cavill/Bennett Knox
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	the weight of everything we couldn't say

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, the first episode of a new season was... an experience. I have thoughts and feelings, and ideas apparently :P  
> Also I'm looking forward to the other 9 episodes like you have no idea!

The front Tailie car was packed, voices rising above the gathered crowd.

Bennett elbowed his way through the horde of people not giving a damn one way or another about pleasantries or being polite. Melanie was back on Snowpiecer, and he’d be damned if he didn’t—

If he didn’t—

Word had gotten back to him, via the grapevine of rumours and gossip, catapulting him out of his chair in an instant and having him rushing out of the Engine without so much as a word to Javi. He hoped that Javi knew to take over, but Bennett couldn’t tell he cared much for that either.

If that son of a bitch Wilford had so much as touched her—

He didn’t allow the thought to form. It was bad enough the bastard had had her even for a brief time.

Bennett swore under his breath when someone stepped into his way and he got an elbow into his ribs. Not on purpose, he knew. People just wanted news or reassurance, and he couldn’t begrudge them that.

That they were getting in his way to Mel, on the other hand—

Ahead, there was a quiet, empty spot as though people knew to give everyone there a wide berth without even understanding why.

Layton was standing there, conversing quietly with Till and…

Bennet pushed past a tall man, muttering a quiet apology as his shoulder rammed into someone else. And then he paused when the women standing with Layton and Till looked up, drawn to the commotion and movement.

She looked tired, he noted absently. She was wearing some odd jumpsuit and her hair had escaped the bun near the nape of her neck, loose strands framing her face.

He had never been happier to see anyone in his life.

“Melanie,” he murmured hoarsely, only now made aware of his ragged breathing. He may or may not have just ran a mile straight, trying to get to her.

A shadow of something chased across her face, for a second, before recognition set in. Up until that moment, Bennett was realizing now, he hadn’t been sure he would ever get to see her again.

“Ben,” she said, softly, and he was moving towards her, ignoring Layton and Roche and Till and everyone else who was still there.

God help him—

He reached for her, gathering her against him, all too aware of the hammering of his heart against his ribs and the metallic taste in his mouth, and how the blood rush in his ears was making everything else sound dull by comparison. His arms enveloped around her, as he held her close, desperate to make sure that she was actually there, alive and well and unharmed.

“Hey,” he felt her breathe out against his neck, making him wish that everyone just left. Somewhere, anywhere. Just so he could ask her a million questions and make her promise him a million times that she was alright.

“Never leave me behind again,” he whispered into her ear, quietly enough that only she could hear him.

Melanie let out a small, watery laugh, that made his pulse stutter all the same.

“Promise,” she said.

At that, Bennett pulled away. He lifted his hand to cup it over her face, his eyes searching hers. He didn’t like the tired lines around her eyes and the weariness he was all too familiar with—the long hours in the Engine had left him all too aware of them in a way he wished he wasn’t. He wondered when was the last time she had eaten, if she’d slept in the past 24 hours.

People were staring, he knew. Could hear the lull in the conversations around them.

He didn’t care, not even one bit.

“Are you okay?” Bennett asked, bowing his head closer to hers. “Mel, are you…”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, and she even managed to muster up a smile that he didn’t quite buy. Her hand curled over his wrist, holding his hand against her face. “I’m alright, I promise.”

He nodded, vowing to get her to tell him the truth later. And then he nodded once more, and leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead before he wrapped his arms around her once again.

This had been a long fight—against the cold, for survival. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to keep on trying if he lost her.

\---

* * *

It was funny how long a time seven years could be, and how short, too, flying by almost in a blink.

Bennett’s memories from before the freeze had started getting muddled after a while, the smells and tastes and textures long gone fading from his mind. Every now and then, he would lie in bed at night, too tired to sleep, and try to remember the smell of the damp soil in the spring—that fresh scent that would permeate the air peeking from under the melting snow. He would try to conjure the feeling of standing in the sunlight or the sound of pine needles crunching beneath his feet as he walked through a park. Or the feeling of the ocean sucking the sand out from beneath him as he stood in the surf.

He could no longer do that, couldn’t remember any of that. Not really. The smells and sounds and everything feeling more like something that he thought those things were supposed to feel like, rather than what they had once truly been, a long time ago.

It was in those moments that he wondered about Melanie. Couldn’t help but wonder. There hadn’t been a second in the past seven years that she hadn’t been a part of his life, one way or another, and he couldn’t help but wonder when it had happened. When had she become such an integral part of everything that he was that he could hardly envision a life without her.

Layton had whisked her away afterwards, to draw up more plans and work out more strategies, Bennett’s fight and his heated arguments—“Let her rest, Layton. Nothing is going to change in a few hours”—going completely ignored. (By Melanie, more than anyone.)

It was not over yet. Getting her back on Snowpiercer had been a relief, the kind that he had never known he could feel. But it hadn’t changed the fact that they were now permanently anchored to Big Alice. That Melanie’s plan to make sure that the supply train couldn’t leave them to die was now making it impossible to escape Wilford. And that there was more fight to come, the people who had never met Wilford siding with him because he knew how to make promises he wouldn’t keep. By the time they caught on, Bennett suspected, it was going to be too late.

And the daughter…

He didn’t even know where to begin processing that. All the times Melanie had bolted up in bed from a nightmare, her heart racing and her breath caught in her throat, plagued by guilt—did it make it better to know that her child had been alive all along, or worse, thinking of all the years they had missed. The daughter that Bennett knew hadn’t followed her mother to the other side, choosing Wilford over Melanie.

There was so much there he couldn’t even begin to process. How was she supposed to deal with it, he had no idea.

He knocked on her door hours later, on the off chance she might have returned from the meeting with Layton and the rest of them. There was little hope for that, Bennett knew, even though the time was nearing midnight, and she was likely barely standing on her feet.

For so long, Melanie Cavill had been the driving force behind everything on this train, literally so. And now here he was, desperate beyond everything to protect her from the storm that had yet to come. Even if she didn’t need him to.

“Yeah?” she called back from behind the door.

Surprised, Bennett pressed his palm to the keypad, the door sliding open before him with a quiet swoosh. He stepped into her quarters, setting boxed food on the table—she needed to eat, and he was willing to bet everyone he owned she hadn’t had a bite since yesterday.

“Mel?” he called out quietly.

The door to the bathroom stood slightly ajar. Melanie stood in front of the mirror, wearing a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra. Her hair was down, and wet from the shower, the whole room smelling like her soap. Half turned towards the mirror, she was studying her shoulder, her fingers trailing over the smooth skin.

Bennett set the food on her desk and stepped towards the bathroom.

“Mel?” he said again, feeling his brows knit together ever so slightly. “You okay?”

“I had frostbite,” she said, without looking towards him. “My suit… it got punctured outside, and by the time I came in…” she trailed off.

The bathroom was far too small for them both, but Bennett didn’t care. He moved towards her, giving her body a careful once-over as he searched for—for things he didn’t want to find, if he was being honest with himself.

“Where?” he asked, all too aware of what frostbite could do, leaving hands without fingers and feet without toes. Of how it could never truly heal. But her skin appeared to be intact, smooth and healthy. She looked a bit paler than normal, but who wouldn’t, after what she had been through.

She was shaking her head, looking confused.

“They gave me something. A salve, or a cream.” She smoothed her hand over her shoulder, and then finally—finally—looked up at him. “And now it’s gone.”

His frown deepened momentarily. “The frostbite is gone?” he echoed.

“I don’t know what they have been up to all this time,” she said as her eyes searched his. “But seven years is a long time, and whatever they had come up with—”

She cut off, and turned properly to him.

“What the hell…” Bennett muttered as his gaze dropped down to her ribs and a red mark on her skin. Something that looked like a burn. “Did they tase you?”

He reached for it, without thinking, sweeping his thumb carefully over it.

The corner of Melanie’s mouth quirked up, without much humour. “Kevin is holding a grudge,” she said, although without malice.

It was then that it occurred to him that she had expected it to go much worse. The realization hit him with a jolt of dread, the fears that had churned in his stomach for hours while he had waited on news from her, or about her, rising up like bile in his throat.

He swore under his breath, a spark of anger flaring up in his chest.

“That son of a bitch.” He clenched his jaw and rubbed his eyes, wishing to erase the mental image of it all from his mind.

“Ben.”

He lowered his hand and found her looking at him. A shuddering breath stuttered out of his chest.

“Are you alright?” he asked, quietly. “Are you really fine?”

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. He wondered what the definition of alright was, at this point. Did being alive cover it? On impulse, he reached for her, cupping her face with his hands, his thumb stroking the ridge of her cheekbone.

After a long moment, Melanie nodded, one of her hands coming up to curl around his wrist.

“Will you stay?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Bennett swallowed. The adrenaline rush that had had him going for the past twelve hours, give or take, draining out of his system. If it wasn’t for the three cups of coffee he had drunk over the past couple of hours, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand straight.

He needed rest, and so did she, but while the idea of his own bunk—not shared with anyone—was appealing, he couldn’t even bear the thought of going to his own quarters.

“Yeah,” he breathed, and she moved closed to him, burying her face against his neck as his arms came to wrap around her. His lips grazed against her temple as he breathed in the familiar scent of her—something that he had long learned to associate with comfort.

“You need to eat,” he said, after a long moment, half expecting her to protest.

She didn’t. She merely nodded and stepped out of his arms, but Bennett’s hand darted out to curl around her wrist and draw her back.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said without looking at her, his gaze trained on the palm of her hand. “When the coms were down and we couldn’t reach you, I thought—” he cut off, unable to finish it.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next, Ben,” she said, softly, her voice full of such raw emotion he could barely stand to hear it.

When he lifted his gaze to hers, her eyes were bottomless and frightened in a way he had never seen before, reminding him very acutely that while he might have spent hours imagining every worst-case scenario while she had been gone, Melanie had to actually live them.

“I guess we’ll have to figure it out,” he said, after a moment. “Together.” He let out a long breath and leaned forward to press a kiss to the crown of her head. “Let’s eat.”

Back in the room, Melanie located a hoodie and pulled it on. They ate sitting on the floor, with their backs leaning against her bunk, without speaking. He knew he needed to ask more about Wilford. And about her daughter. But the truth was that he didn’t know how. He didn’t have even the smallest clue.

“Stay,” she repeated afterwards, and he nodded, climbing into her bunk and scooting over until his back was pressed against the wall to make room for her.

Melanie nestled against him until he was curled around her with his chest pressed against her back and an old quilt pulled over them. Bennett’s arm wound tightly around her. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath, fitting himself against her, attuned to her breathing, to how it started to even out, after a while.

“I knew you would come back,” he said quietly, his mind teetering on the brink between sleep and wakefulness, his face pressed into her hair.

“You did?” Melanie echoed, her voice a whoosh of breath as her fingers snaked around his wrist. “That makes one of us.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone, I hope you enjoyed it!  
> A million thanks for **akajb** for betaing :) 
> 
> What did you guys think of the season 2 premiere?


End file.
